Why Does Breakfast Make Some People Hungry?

“Why does breakfast make me hungry?” When someone asked me that question for the umpteenth time since my methods became popular, I finally decided to indulge in a deeper exploration of what the plausible mechanism might be. I thought I’d share my thoughts on that with you today.

It’s a fairly lengthy article, but hopefully interesting enough to keep your attention, informative enough to teach you a few things, and decent enough to mark my return back into the love-hate-relationship I maintain with the Internet (…and its potpourri of good and bad, smart and dumb, facts and bull****).

My heart sank when it seemed they had provided overwhelming evidence for the benefits of breakfast a few months ago. But I proved them wrong.

Why Does Breakfast Make Some People Hungry?

As mentioned, it wasn’t without grounds that the question piqued my curiosity beyond that which could be attributed to food selection. In questionnaires, clients would often note that eating in the morning made them ravenous before noon, and sometimes no more than an hour after a steady breakfast.

On Facebook, in emails, and in casual conversation, anecdotes to a similar effect kept popping up too frequently to be explained by mere coincidence. Or to be shrugged off with a half-assed answer, with the underlying assumption that everyone’s eating crap for breakfast.

These folks weren’t eating Cheerios rounded off with a peanut butter sandwhich and a large glass of orange juice – you know, the usual Average Joe breakfast that would make anyone hungry an hour later.

No, these guys had your typical fitcentric breakfast with the kinds of foods that most of us ate at one point or another – oatmeal, dairy, eggs, etc. Often, but certainly not that often since the increasing popularity of Paleo, a meal characterized by moderate to high amounts of carb and protein, relatively low on fat, and more often than not a decent chunk of fiber.

You can spend all day arguing about the healthiness of whole grains and dairy (just not here, thanks), but fact remains that these foods could not singlehandedly explain the fact that breakfast triggered hunger in some people.

Hell, just google “why does breakfast make me hungry”, “hungry after breakfast”, or “breakfast makes me hungry”, and you’ll see that forums are swamped by people with the same experiences.

I’ll add myself to the aforementioned crowd. Omitting breakfast may have been the single greatest improvement to my diet when I embarked on my intermittent fasting regimen back in ’06, adherence wise.

For me, like countless other Leangains practitioners, breakfast was a huge pain in the ass and skipping it made all the difference in the world. Compared to before, dieting became almost effortless.

Not to mention long-term maintenance. No more counting the hours ‘till noon, and feeling like I was on a diet, regardless of whether I was actually dieting, maintaining, or “bulking.”

My favorite "breakfast" these days is the all-you can-eat-beef-buffet at 6 PM or later.

For me and many others out there, skipping breakfast keeps hunger away far better than eating in the morning – paradoxically enough. This is of course very interesting to me, because it’s a damn strange thing. Why is it that some people are better off not eating anything at all in the morning? How can you be better off with zero calories than hundreds of calories under these specific conditions? It just doesn’t make sense.

So I set out trying to answer that question, and finally arrived at a satisfying hypothesis a mechanism behind that mysterious post-breakfast hunger surge that so many of us experience.

The original article ended up being 12000+ words long with a ridiculously pretentious academic tone, branching out in all kinds of directions on semi-related issues. Far too long for most people’s attention spans, and way too technical for most peoples level of understanding.

Yesterday I sat down and rewrote the whole thing, trying to convey it all in the same manner I’d use when explaining it to my girlfriend, bro, or invisible friend, to which I’ve retold this whole thing to numerous times now. That’s Berkhanese for “some things are simplified from my perspective, but it’s still complex enough for the lay man, and hopefully decent enough to satisfy the expert.” Enjoy.

* In regards to breakfast, I will be referring to breakfast in the traditional sense of the term throughout this article, i.e. eating upon arising. Not breakfast in the original sense of the meaning, i.e. as the first meal after an overnight fast.

Please note (June 28th): I wrote the original article in Word using a reference manager to format the reference list at the end. However, as I did not manually input the DOI for many of the studies cited throughout the article, it completely screwed up the bibliography (automatically generated). I'm going to take care of that, and add the most vital references later (realistically tomorrow or in the weekend). For now, the reference list is incomplete. That said, the first part is very basic info - all of it covered in Sapolsky's book - and the rest should be very easy confirmed with a few PubMed searches.

Lastly, I haven't double-checked the article for errors, and will do some editing/linking where required later tonight.

Defining Post-Breakfast Hunger

Trying to define post-breakfast hunger is an exercise in futility. It’s something you’ll instantly be able to relate to, because you have the same experience, or something that makes you wonder what the hell I’m talking about, because you simply don’t have that problem. I’m guessing most of my readers fall into the former category, so I won’t be spending much time on academic discourse in attempting to define the phenomenon beyond what I’ve already done. Simply put, some people get hungry, very hungry, and/or experience cravings of various magnitude shortly after eating breakfast in the morning.

In the scientific literature, researchers who specialize in research on appetite, hunger and addiction, make a distinction between the aforementioned terms (i.e. hunger, craving, etc), but since post-breakfast hunger has been described in subjective experiences from clients, forum posts, etc, and without any truly detailed inquiry from my side, I’m guessing most people refer to the same phenomena when they talk about post-breakfast hunger in terms of getting cravings, feeling hungry, feeling ravenous, and so forth. For me personally, the sensation can be described as hunger, in the sense most of you probably think of hunger.

Post-breakfast hunger sets in somewhere between morning and noon, usually 30 mins to 2 hours after breakfast, and doesn’t usually manifest in any symptoms beyond noticeable hunger. However, some people have mentioned that irritability and impaired ability to focus on tasks that require sustained amounts of concentration, co-occurs with post-breakfast hunger.

An important point is that the same meal will not trigger this early and/or pronounced sensation of hunger if consumed later in the day. Post-breakfast hunger cannot be explained by differences in food choice, but by certain individual factors, and their interaction with a time-of-day effect of feeding on hormonal profile and metabolism.

Cereal will make anyone hungry soon again, but an important point of this article is that post-breakfast hunger is independent of food choice (i.e. it cannot be attributed to the simple fact that people tend to eat different type of foods in the morning versus later in the day). By the way, the above is part of my post-workout meal, when I occasionally include a box of cereal. I might be having some beef, potatoes, and ice cream afterwards to celebrate the new deadlift PB I just scored. 600 lbs x 4 in case anyone's curious. Stay tuned for the video

A Primer on Cortisol

Cortisol is the main culprit behind for post-breakfast hunger, the up-until-now mysterious affliction that is the topic behind this article. Most of you probably associate cortisol with stress and muscle catabolism, and consequently with “bad” and “avoid.” This is partly correct, but mostly erroneous.

Since “partly correct” is to blame for many of the nonsensical diet myths out there, it’s useless. People claiming that eating six times a day will stoke your metabolism, and that fasting causes starvation mode, are “partly correct” – but mostly full of ****, as I explained in “Top Ten Fasting Myths Debunked.”

The context is often critical, and this is especially true in regards to cortisol - which is why I’m going to give you a very brief primer on this complex and multi-facetted hormone. There are almost as many definitions of stress as there are myths about cortisol, but in regards to the former, the one that appeals to me from a minimalist perspective is:

Stress can be defined as any challenge to homeostasis of an individuum that requires an adaptive response of that individuum.

- Newport & Nemeroff, 2002.

Cortisol is secreted in response to a stressor, in order to help you cope with the stressor efficiently, whether that stressor is a balls-to-walls-set of 20-rep squats, or a looming deadline for an article that needs to be finished. The role of cortisol during these challenges is to boost you, not cripple you, whether the stressor is physical (e.g. exercise, injury, cold) or psychological (e.g. a complex or cognitively demanding challenge) in nature (or both*).

Thanks to increasing cortisol levels during training, we can push way past our non-stressed comfort level, and maintain an adequate rate of exertion for a longer period of time than what would have been possible otherwise, without being overtly distracted by pain, hunger and fatigue. Cortisol improves muscle and glucose metabolism, increases pain tolerance, diminishes fatigue and strengthens motivation.

By the way, does this answer those of you who have asked me about my thoughts on pre-workout cortisol blockers? No? OK, then all I can say is good luck with those squats, buddy..

Due to cortisol in response to a cognitive challenge, we can recall important facts faster and in greater detail than otherwise, maintain focus, stay alert and pull all-nighters in front of the computer if needed. Cortisol increases sensory perception, memory recall, and wakefulness.

Most of the above is covered in Robert Sapolsky’s excellent book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, in which he also explains when and why cortisol becomes bad for us. Briefly, prolonged exposure to a stressor results in chronically elevated cortisol, which then does all sorts of bad things to us. There’s a time and place for cortisol. In this day and age, the line between work (stress) and leisure time (rest) is often blurred.

With constant self-imposed demands, never ending obligations, and endless opportunities to work (in the office, at home, etc), the stressors of modern society are of the psychological variety and they are always present if you allow them in.

In stark contrast, the stressors of the past were more often of the intermittent and physical variety. While they were probably more severe and often life threatening, there was a clear-cut line between the start and the end. And this explains the title of Sapolsky’s book, which I cannot recommend highly enough, and which I urge you to read if you want a more detailed explanation of stress and the workings of cortisol.

What Sapolsky doesn’t cover in great detail however, is the cortisol awakening response and the acute effects of cortisol on insulin secretion.

The Cortisol Awakening Response

Most people get the concept of exercise and work as stressors, “challenges to homeostasis”, which require an adaptive response (cortisol). But few people think of waking up from sleep and rising out of bed as a particularly stressful event. However, waking up from sleep is indeed a profound challenge to homeostasis, if you think of stress in those terms.

The transitioning between the passive sleeping state to the active wake state is – in a way – like a leisurely walk interrupted by an all-out-sprint. In endocrinology, there’s a special name for the events that transpire to wake you up in the morning: the cortisol awakening response (CAR), on which there exists a substantial amount of research.

Awakening stimulates ACTH secretion in the pituitary, which then stimulates cortisol secretion in the adrenal glands. The rapid increase and peak in cortisol level after awakening is termed the cortisol awakening response (CAR). Although it is thought that CAR is a distinct part of diurnal cortisol rhythm, CAR and diurnal cortisol rhythm actually represent two separate adrenocortical activities.

- Shin et al., 2011.

As the body prepares to start up for the day, cortisol gradually starts to rise in the second half of the night, almost resulting in a climax as you open your eyes. But as you waddle out of bed on the way to the shower, cortisol will continue to climb. It will reach a peak 30-45 minutes later – which is right around breakfast time.

We’ve now reached a key point in this hypothesis behind post-breakfast hunger, because the precise timing of the circadian cortisol peak (CAR) and breakfast consumption has some very interesting effects on insulin secretion.

The Cortisol Awakening Response and Insulin Secretion

So you’ve taken your shower, dressed for the day, and done whatever else you like to do in the morning that’s none of my business, and now you sit down to eat breakfast before work, school, or whatever else. I’m guessing it’s now some 30-45 minutes before you stepped out of bed if you’re like most people.

As you sit down to eat, or at some point right around that time, cortisol reaches the highest point of the day, which would be 20-30 nmol/l. That’s compared to 2-5 nmol/l between evening and midnight, which is the lowest point during the circadian cycle if you want some numbers. It might go higher later during the day depending on the magnitude of stress you’re exposed to, but that’s besides the point.

The point is that the circadian cortisol peak coincides with breakfast, and that this is the only point during the day that cortisol reaches high enough levels to exert an acute and pronounced effect on feeding-induced insulin secretion.

If that sounds vague for the endocrinology enthusiasts out there and those of you who are familiar with cortisol, allow me to provide you with a brief explanation in language you can appreciate it. What I mean here is that, at the CAR peak, cortisol climbs high enough to agonize glucocorticoid receptors. This changes the non-genomic interaction between cortisol and insulin action from being permissively restraining by the former, as seen at other times during the day due to mineralocorticoid binding dominance, to a non-genomic stimulating, or synergistic if you will, effect (Vila et al., 2010;Williams et al., 2012)

If the last paragraph doesn’t make much sense to you, then you know why I had to rewrite the whole article and simplify it.

Short-term* exposure to cortisol powerfully augments insulin secretion and this is the key point here.

* In stark contrast, long-term exposure has the opposite effect.

Average Joe Eats Breakfast

So, what happens then, as you start eating? Bad things? No, not necessarily, depending on the other variables in this equation – more on that very soon.

Enter Average Joe, who is average as it gets, with all its implications. Meaning fat, poor insulin sensitivity, and out of shape, according to our standard, but average according to the standard for modern man used in the scientific literature.

Average Joe sits down to eat his breakfast, and due to the influence of cortisol, his pancreas responds with a rapid and – relative to other points during the day, all else equal – high burst of insulin. This forces blood glucose down faster to baseline than later in the day, which in this context is a desirable effect.

Although the feeding-induced insulin peak comes much faster and is much higher, due to the meal coinciding with the circadian cortisol peak, the net effect should be that average insulin secretion and blood glucose in the post-prandial period post-breakfast is lower than later in the day, under a low-cortisol fed condition. In a way, Average Joe’s sluggish pancreas might actually benefit from the augmented insulin response in the morning,

That’s Average Joe. But what about Fit Joe? This is when it gets interesting.

Insulin Sensitivity and Insulin Resistance: Brief Primer

Something has always struck me as very peculiar and far too common of an observation to be coincidental.

When I first started dieting way back in the day, I did just fine with on your run-of-the-mill high meal frequency diet, with your run-of-the-mill fitcentric oatmeal based breakfast. I started out pretty fat at around 225 lbs, and lost about 40 lbs give or take, on a fairly generic approach mostly.

Sure enough, I did tons of beginner mistakes, especially in the cardio department (overdoing it), and subsequently suffered for it. I had my setbacks, like everyone else, but I powered through them all. I wrote about this journey a few years ago, in case you care to read more about it. There’s a few photos from back in the day too, which does a decent job of showing my overall development throughout the years.

Anyway, it wasn’t until at a later stage, leanness wise, that breakfast really started becoming a problem. First of all, I always felt that it was an unnecessary caloric burden that interfered with dieting. I wasn’t that hungry in the morning, but more so in the evening.

I would never have been able to maintain this conditioning with breakfast.

Had I known better back then, I would have started skipping breakfast earlier, of course, but back then everyone was preaching the virtues of breakfast and you didn’t really dare to break all these golden rules of the fitness game.

(And you’d still be eating breakfast if I didn’t put my ass on the line to set you straight 5-6 years ago, or whenever you first read my stuff. Am I right or am I right?)

Second of all, it seemed like the post-breakfast hunger surge increased in amplitude and frequency for every damn ounce of body fat I lost beyond a certain point. At some point, it became overwhelming, and that’s when the wheel-spinning started, progress wise. Until I finally decided to do my own research, no longer swallowing down the bull**** fed to me by so-called fitness gurus and the Journal of Broscience. The rest is history.

Anyway, let me put my labcoat back on again, and explain to you how this fits in with everything else I’ve talked about so far. We’ve now reached the second key point in this hypothesis behind post-breakfast hunger. The first key point, as you might recall, was the CAR and its peak coinciding with breakfast.

The second key point is insulin sensitivity. What happens when an insulin sensitive person eats something? Briefly, rising blood glucose levels feeds back to the pancreas (i.e. tells it that insulin is needed), and the pancreas responds with insulin. In turn, insulin then shuttles glucose from the blood to places where its needed (e.g. liver and muscle), which lowers blood glucose and prevents it from accumulating in the blood.

High blood glucose levels for longer periods of time (as seen in untreated type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance or poor insulin sensitivity, etc) does all sorts of bad things to us, which is why we want to bring it back to a healthy baseline as soon as possible. This is why high insulin sensitivity is a good thing.

If you’re insulin sensitive, the pancreas responds fast, with a big burst of insulin, in response to glucose, and then tapers off when it’s no longer needed. A sharp peak of insulin, with a prompt decline. The net result is lower readings of post-prandial blood glucose and insulin levels.

In contrast, insulin resistance results in a sluggish response, with a small burst of insulin, and a slow decline. The net result is higher readings of post-prandial blood glucose and insulin.

Imagine a graph tracking insulin secretion in the post-prandial period, with time on the X-axis and insulin on the Y-axis. Now picture a peak-like pattern for an insulin sensitive person, and a hill-like pattern for an insulin resistant person – that’s how it would look.

An important point in the above scenario is that insulin reaches a higher max in the insulin sensitive example.

Insulin and Blood Glucose Regulation

Recall that cortisol augments insulin secretion. When you have high levels of cortisol (i.e. at the peak of the CAR) and eat something, insulin secretion is boosted. The pancreas responds faster and stronger.

But Fit Joe already boasts a really robust insulin response, because he is insulin sensitive. Now add the insulin boosting effect of CAR on top of that, and what do you get? In theory, a very strong and sharp insulin surge. And what is the consequence of that?

Put differently – just as an example – what is the consequence of injecting too much insulin relative to needs (i.e. glucose)? If you overdo it by a wide margin, you risk all the horrors of life threatening hypoglycemia, with the result being extreme hunger, confusion, coma, brain damage and death, in that order.

While the above presents a real danger for diabetics, it doesn’t for healthy individuals. We have evolved an extremely efficient regulatory system for preventing blood glucose from dropping too low, to levels where it can compromise bodily functions and cognition, and impair our chances for survival.

Indeed, blood glucose regulation is a very secure system, with redundant mechanisms able to increase glucose output to meet needs in case one part of the system fails. Glucagon, epinephrine (adrenaline), cortisol and growth hormone are different hormones that cooperate to fulfill the role of another in case it fails to do its job properly.

But this system has not evolved to deal with blood glucose that is just low enough to trigger hunger, without any serious side effects beyond that. In fact, low blood glucose as a hunger signal was the focus of one of the earliest theories on appetite regulation.

Why Does Breakfast Make Fit Joe Hungry?

In the “glucostatic theory”, Jean Mayer in the 1950’s proposed that low blood sugar served as the primary hunger-triggering signal that prompted us to feed. Later studies has taught us that appetite regulation is way more complicated than that, but there is clearly a role for blood glucose in this equation.

Building on Mayer’s theory, Campbell (Campbell, 2003) has proposed a more complex and refined theory, in which he – briefly summarized – suggests that falling blood glucose levels might serve as a hunger signal. This has been echoed elsewhere, in the sense that the speed of which blood glucose falls can serve as an alarm signal in a sense – while a prompt lowering of post-prandial blood glucose levels is desirable, too steep of a decline can be interpreted as danger, and trigger a hunger signal.

So when insulin sensitive Fit Joe eats breakfast right at the peak of his CAR, he gets a lot of insulin to go with that meal, with the result being a very speedy drop in blood glucose.

Now consider the meal itself. What does a typical fitcentric breakfast look like? Odds are that it’s higher on the protein and carb side of things, low on fat, and quite often includes a source of dairy or milk protein. Any one of these components further contributes to insulin secretion, independent of each other.

As a consequence of the above, hunger rears its ugly face shortly after the meal. Either as a result of blood glucose dipping slightly to low, or as a result of it dropping too fast within a narrow time-frame.

Putting It All Together

And that, my friends, was my abbreviated explanation for post-breakfast hunger. If you give it some thoughts, it fits right in with my personal experience, my observations, and the many anecdotes I’ve come across throughout the years.

Post-breakfast hunger is something that occurs more frequently, and more noticeably so, in fairly lean individuals. I’d estimate that it’s fairly common in the 12-14% range. As you close in on single digit body fat percentage, it becomes very common indeed - and a serious obstacle for many.

Gradually, as we get leaner, we become more insulin sensitive. Little by little, as insulin sensitivity goes up, we get hungrier faster and more annoyingly so after breakfast, until we start wondering why we’re starving a mere 1-2 hours after a decently sized meal.

In a sense, it’s funny that blood glucose regulation works better in the fasted state, relative to the aforementioned breakfast scenario. It’s understandable when you consider that in the fasted state, you have balance between input and output, which in this analogy would be glucose and insulin. Glucose input to the blood is low and is well maintained with a low level of insulin in an insulin sensitive person.

With breakfast, insulin output is disproportionate to the input (breakfast), due to cortisol. A mismatch that would otherwise not be present under different circumstances (i.e. the same meal eaten later in the day, with low cortisol, or by someone with lower insulin sensitivity).

All of this raises interesting questions regarding the role of the cortisol-insulin connection, or dare I say breakfast consumption, and adaptation (or absence thereof) in the role of human evolution and its consequences for modern man, with his modern meal patterns.

Very interesting indeed, when you consider the events that transpire on a metabolic and transcriptional level once you combine cortisol and insulin. Not to mention the role of cortisol in place preference conditioning, learning, and the fact that even though breakfast-first-thing-in-the-morning is an artificial habit, manufactured by one of the first and possibly largest giant of the food industry (The Kellogg’s Company), it certainly is a habit we learned very fast.

But that’s for another time. Or for another one smart enough to recognize the clues to something big that I just handed them. Assuming they give a ****.

Closing Point

As a closing point, I want to point out that there were a few things that I had to cut out, since this article is long enough as it is. I figure that I should mention them very briefly by stating that there is a high degree of individual variance in the CAR, and that this might affect insulin secretion as well (i.e. a high CAR may have a larger influence on the feeding-induced insulin surge).

Furthermore, there is obviously a big role of food and macronutrient choice in all of this, but the role played may not be one that people typically expect. For example, some protein sources – or should I say, amino acids - are not only highly insulinogenic, but also trigger cortisol secretion. Incidentally, it tends to be the ones often consumed with breakfast.

Perhaps I need not mention that protein triggers a cortisol response, depending on the context. Oh, you thought that it was the other way around – that protein lowers cortisol? Well, then you learned another little something new today.

Maybe I’ll talk more about this another day, because there were many related and interesting semi-related parts to the topic of this article that I had skimp on, or cut out. Hopefully, time and motivation permits. I don’t trust myself to give any guarantees for the latter, unfortunately. But for the time and being, I’m back.

P.S.

In case anyone’s wondering where I’ve been, especially those of you used to reading my frequently updated nonsense on Twitter and Facebook, only to see me disappear from the face of the Earth for the last two months.

An “I’ve been busy” type of response won’t do this time around. That would be a disservice to my true and loyal fans, many of who do a terrific job of directing others to the enlightenment they come to discover here. Not to mention an insult to those I’ve had to break important obligations to – you know who you are, and you will hear from me soon.

To make a long story short, an unfortunate chain of events forced me to take time off from everything. Literally everything on the online side of things, which is more or less like saying time off from work.

In either case, I’m back now. I understand that my work here is not yet done, and I shall finish what I started. Or die trying.

A special thanks to those of you who emailed me and wrote about the role I played in your life, development, career choice, inquired about my health, and reminded me of the important role I have come to play for some people. The few times I checked my inbox, it seems that there was yet another email from one of you, and I appreciated every single one of them. Here’s to hoping that I’ll get back to you one day.

Thanks for the support.

Reference List

Important: To be completed in the coming days. Like I said, my citation manager screwed me over.

ok, I am one of those that if I eat breakfast it starts me off on a feeding frenzy through out the day. It makes me ravenous and the worst part is it leaves me brain dead. Very tired and lethargic.
I have known for a long time that the "eating breakfast is a main meal of the day" myth needed debunking as it was all lies.
What you dont state is how and when we should be having our first meal of the day.
For me Im best with that being lunch time..
But if body building thats a long time with out the protien I need..
Answers Please?

For now Im jsut having a protien shake with raw eggs for breakfast on the odd occassions that I can stomache having breaky.. I find its a matter of trying to find a way to have protien in the lightest form possible so it feels like you are just consuming a drink. ie not a meal..

I would love to hear your thoughts on how to get protein through out the morning with out eating though..

ok, I am one of those that if I eat breakfast it starts me off on a feeding frenzy through out the day. It makes me ravenous and the worst part is it leaves me brain dead. Very tired and lethargic.
I have known for a long time that the "eating breakfast is a main meal of the day" myth needed debunking as it was all lies.
What you dont state is how and when we should be having our first meal of the day.
For me Im best with that being lunch time..
But if body building thats a long time with out the protien I need..
Answers Please?

For now Im jsut having a protien shake with raw eggs for breakfast on the odd occassions that I can stomache having breaky.. I find its a matter of trying to find a way to have protien in the lightest form possible so it feels like you are just consuming a drink. ie not a meal..

I would love to hear your thoughts on how to get protein through out the morning with out eating though..

ok, I am one of those that if I eat breakfast it starts me off on a feeding frenzy through out the day. It makes me ravenous and the worst part is it leaves me brain dead. Very tired and lethargic.
I have known for a long time that the "eating breakfast is a main meal of the day" myth needed debunking as it was all lies.
What you dont state is how and when we should be having our first meal of the day.
For me Im best with that being lunch time..
But if body building thats a long time with out the protien I need..
Answers Please?

For now Im jsut having a protien shake with raw eggs for breakfast on the odd occassions that I can stomache having breaky.. I find its a matter of trying to find a way to have protien in the lightest form possible so it feels like you are just consuming a drink. ie not a meal..

I would love to hear your thoughts on how to get protein through out the morning with out eating though..

cheers for the brilliant article..

Long time without protein?
Why? Do you think you'll go catabolic if you don't down
protein first thing in the morning? It's bs
It ain't that easy to go catabolic don't worry.
You can safely skip breakfast and eat your lunch as first meal
if that's makes it easier to stick to your diet.
I fast for 20 hours a day (been doing it for years now)
I haven't hit a plateau in 8 months, size is increasing
without affecting BF.
With that said, if you want to get some protein first thing
that's what Leucine/EEAs/BCAAs are for. Getting 10/20gr
in between meals (in your case replacing breakfast) might increase
protein synthesis

I typically get up at 6, gym at 7:15 and first meal at 9:30- usually a protein shake with oat powder. I just don't have an appetite when I get up and I've been able to gain/cut as I please. Very good read.

D&mn, that's impressive, mind if I ask what size/weight you have put on since starting the regimen?

I've never been after gaining weight, I wouldn't advice that protocol to someone who
wants to bulk. My goal was/is to keep my BF as is and still gaining lil size,
and for that, is perfect.

In the last 6 months tho', I added *inches* everywhere, I don't know wtf is going on but
I kept getting stronger non-stop, especially my back got so much wider and thicker,
but my whole body really.
But my diet hasn't changed, it's my workout that got even crazier..
To be honest one thing did change in my diet in the past 6 months:
I used to do 1 refeed/carb-up a week, then my body stopped producing the enzyme
needed to digest carbs (any) so I stopped the refeed protocol.
That should've gave me opposite results, instead my body seems to work
so much better without carbs (granted that the refeed was an experiment, I did it
only for 10 weeks or so..).

I'll be posting some new pics soon so to compare with the ones are up now.
BF was not affected, actually, I'm even a bit drier and more
vascular thanks to AAv2/Recompadrol stack,
veins started to pop up on my back, shoulders and traps too even at rest

I've never been after gaining weight, I wouldn't advice that protocol to someone who
wants to bulk. My goal was/is to keep my BF as is and still gaining lil size,
and for that, is perfect.

In the last 6 months tho', I added *inches* everywhere, I don't know wtf is going on but
I kept getting stronger non-stop, especially my back got so much wider and thicker,
but my whole body really.
But my diet hasn't changed, it's my workout that got even crazier..
To be honest one thing did change in my diet in the past 6 months:
I used to do 1 refeed/carb-up a week, then my body stopped producing the enzyme
needed to digest carbs (any) so I stopped the refeed protocol.
That should've gave me opposite results, instead my body seems to work
so much better without carbs (granted that the refeed was an experiment, I did it
only for 10 weeks or so..).

I'll be posting some new pics soon so to compare with the ones are up now.
BF was not affected, actually, I'm even a bit drier and more
vascular thanks to AAv2/Recompadrol stack,
veins started to pop up on my back, shoulders and traps too even at rest

Interesting about the advancements after discontinuing the refeed. Thanks for the response.

Interesting about the advancements after discontinuing the refeed. Thanks for the response.

No prob, I was surprised as well
I got some size while I was doing refeeds
but look was different, same BF but a bit less "sharp"
Since I stopped not only I kept increasing size but
body comp improved so much, more vascular, grainy look..
I feel better too, I used to feel weak the day after,
which affected my wo for that day, now my energy levels
are always up and even I keep hitting PR on compound lifts every month
so much better..

No prob, I was surprised as well
I got some size while I was doing refeeds
but look was different, same BF but a bit less "sharp"
Since I stopped not only I kept increasing size but
body comp improved so much, more vascular, grainy look..
I feel better too, I used to feel weak the day after,
which affected my wo for that day, now my energy levels
are always up and even I keep hitting PR on compound lifts every month
so much better..

D&mn, you make the keto diet sound super enticing lol. That said, most of what I've read and experienced says that without a poWO carb source you should be stagnant in gains, if not regressing. How are you keeping up your glycogen stores? According to Kiefer, they should be toast in less than a week of lifting weights without carbs.

D&mn, you make the keto diet sound super enticing lol. That said, most of what I've read and experienced says that without a poWO carb source you should be stagnant in gains, if not regressing. How are you keeping up your glycogen stores? According to Kiefer, they should be toast in less than a week of lifting weights without carbs.

I might be a strange case here, I honestly don't know, but I can tell you that in *my* experience,
that is bs. Like big time bs.
I've done postwo carbs for few months years ago (just a bowl of cereals pwo)
because I didn't know better and because I too was reading stuff like that..
Not that I was fat by any stretch but definitely not even close to the shape/BF I am now,
my strength is *doubled* since then and my gains progress exactly the same
(granted like I mentioned before that I am NOT after major mass gains,
I don't do bulk, I'm fairly happy with my size and I'm natural anyway so..)

With my workout intensity (my sessions are at least 3 hours, most of them even longer, right now 7 days a week)
and DOMS that feel more like actual muscle damages glycogen stores on me are probably toast in 2 days.
How do I keep 'em up? I have no idea to be honest.. I train, I eat the same things every day, it works.
I took some experimentation with food, that's for sure.
Right now if there's a day I feel particularly beat up (deadlift/back thickness/hamstring day is pretty damn heavy..)
I just eat a lil more of the same stuff and I'm gold.
A lil more means really a lil, like a 2 eggs omelette or 150gr of greek yogurt on top of my regular day
I never cheat on my diet, ever. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't remember the last time I did it
must be few years i think

I might be a strange case here, I honestly don't know, but I can tell you that in *my* experience,
that is bs. Like big time bs.
I've done postwo carbs for few months years ago (just a bowl of cereals pwo)
because I didn't know better and because I too was reading stuff like that..
Not that I was fat by any stretch but definitely not even close to the shape/BF I am now,
my strength is *doubled* since then and my gains progress exactly the same
(granted like I mentioned before that I am NOT after major mass gains,
I don't do bulk, I'm fairly happy with my size and I'm natural anyway so..)

With my workout intensity (my sessions are at least 3 hours, most of them even longer, right now 7 days a week)
and DOMS that feel more like actual muscle damages glycogen stores on me are probably toast in 2 days.
How do I keep 'em up? I have no idea to be honest.. I train, I eat the same things every day, it works.
I took some experimentation with food, that's for sure.
Right now if there's a day I feel particularly beat up (deadlift/back thickness/hamstring day is pretty damn heavy..)
I just eat a lil more of the same stuff and I'm gold.
A lil more means really a lil, like a 2 eggs omelette or 150gr of greek yogurt on top of my regular day
I never cheat on my diet, ever. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't remember the last time I did it
must be few years i think

lol def not, i just think my body worked better with protein and fats to begin with,
the long term low carb diet made it adapt even more to such regimen, but yeah,
even in previous conversation with other members here we agreed that the way
my body works seems at least.. unusual lol